Elizabeth+Jorgeson

On April 2, 1912, 25-year-old homemaker Elizabeth M. Loergel Jorgeson died from an abortion reportedly perpetrated that day by Katie Sauer, whose profession is not given. Sauer was held by the Coroner's Jury and indicted by a Grand Jury on November 30. The case never went to trial.

An article in the Chicago //Inter-Ocean// from the year before Elizabeth's death identifies a Chicago woman named Katie Sauer as a midwife. I am working to verify if the midwife and the abortionist are the same person. If the Katie Sauer implicated in Elizabeth's death is indeed this midwife, that would be typical. Abortions in Chicago in that era were most often perpetrated by either doctors or midwives.

Note, please, that with overall public health issues such as doctors not using proper aseptic techniques, lack of access to blood transfusions and antibiotics, and overall poor health to begin with, there was likely little difference between the performance of a legal abortion and illegal practice, and the aftercare for either type of abortion was probably equally unlikely to do the woman much, if any, good. For more information about early 20th Century abortion mortality, see __[|Abortion Deaths 1910-1919] __.

For more on pre-legalization abortion, see __[|The Bad Old Days of Abortion] __ Source: Homicide in Chicago Interactive Database

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